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Tricia's shoulders relaxed and she almost cried out in relief. They didn't know a thing. She was far too paranoid. Like that day she'd thought the guy on the beach was following her.

“…it was that bit about her being a fashion designer that got me.” Patsy's gaze was compassionate and suddenly demanding, all at the same time. “The paper said the woman could make any body shape look good.” Patsy's glance was pointed. “Even mine.”

While Miller continued to tap his thumb and pin her with his unblinking stare, Tricia grasped the back of the chair she'd righted. Four hours' rest wasn't enough to sustain her through the beginning of her worst nightmare coming true. The light above the table was too bright. She was seeing spots.

“And then I remembered when you offered to make
me a new wardrobe. It was the day you saw that Kate Whitehead design and turned white. The day you asked me about finding Miller.”

“Who got his ass sober long enough to call in some favors from San Francisco to find out about that pregnancy test strip they found in Leah Montgomery's apartment.” Miller spoke—nailing her with her own words.

 

“Hi, it's me.” The call came before dawn, Friday morning.

“Is something wrong?” Scott got up from his bunk, instantly awake as he spoke quietly into his cell phone.

“I'm not sure….”

Dammit, he should've listened to his instincts last night, run home to check on her rather than allowing his mind to convince him he was overreacting— That he was getting in too deep, caring too much. That he'd better learn to let go a little bit or he'd be sorry.

“What?” he said more harshly than off-duty Officer Deb Ball deserved. In T-shirt and hastily donned blue pants, he stepped outside the back door of the station.

“Have you talked to her?”

“Not since yesterday before lunch.” They'd had a hellish day—three fires, a fatality on the freeway, a suicide and a heart attack victim. “I didn't get back to the station until after midnight.”

“She didn't go home last night.”

His shoulders fell so quickly he almost lost the phone
at his ear. Scott's stomach burned, his heart stalled, and then started to beat far too hard.

“Where is she?”

“I don't know.”

He didn't say a word. He couldn't.

“I'm sorry, Scott. You save my kid from drowning and I can't even keep track of yours. I feel just sick about it….”

“Where'd you lose her?”

“At Island Dry Cleaners.”

“On Coronado.”

“Yeah. She went in yesterday a little after one. The place closed at seven and she never came out. She must've slipped out the back. I didn't pay attention. She always goes in the front and comes out the front.”

Something was happening on that island. He'd known it since that Sunday the previous month, when she'd gone all the way to the Hotel Del to use the bathroom.

He tried to think. “It's too early to report her missing….”

“I have some favors to call in, too,” Deb said. “You want me to ask the guys to keep an eye out?”

“Yes.” If the city's police were helping him, he still might be able to save her. If it wasn't already too late.

Sick with panic, Scott forced himself through the calming exercises he'd learned during his paramedic training. He would be no good to anyone, not Tricia or Taylor, not himself, if he didn't stay focused.

She could've been abducted, could be tied up somewhere, or worse. If he'd known her secrets, he might know where to look…

“I have no idea what you thought I'd find, trailing her. Nor do I know why she didn't return home. But Betty and I haven't seen one thing these past three weeks that would indicate to us that she's in trouble.”

The words were a relief and painful at the same time. More than anything, he wanted her safe. But if she was safe, why hadn't she come home? Or at least called?

San Diego Union-Tribune
Friday, May 6, 2005
Page 1

Sitting at the table in the station's kitchen, surrounded by the aroma of coffee and pancakes, and the
listless, intermittent conversation of the three men under his command Friday morning, Scott studied the small grainy photo that appeared next to the article. Told himself he was crazy.

And started to sweat.

He'd seen a couple of headlines in the last week or two about the Northern California senator's troubles, but hadn't paid a lot of attention. Living in California had a way of desensitizing a guy to celebrities and their riffraff. Especially a guy who'd once moved in those circles, who not only knew how much of their news was sensationalized, but who'd also sworn he was never going back to that society.

Glancing at the front page again, he calmed himself with empty assurances. He was tired. Sensitive to drama at the moment. The morning's early phone call was interfering with his ability to discern fact from fear.

“You want a refill?” Cliff was standing over him with the pot.

Shaking his head, Scott pulled the paper in front of his face. He'd heard the story back when Whitehead's wife had gone missing, but didn't remember much about it. Whitehead hadn't been a senator then. There'd been no charges. And very little press. He didn't think he'd ever seen a picture.

The photo bore little, if any, resemblance to her. It was ludicrous to link the feeling in his gut to the mention of that mountain cliff and its resident hermit. But for the first time since he'd become a firefighter more
than eleven years before, Scott arranged for a replacement for the last twenty-four hours of his shift and went home.

 

Tricia knew two things. She had to go back to San Francisco.

And there was no need to rush.

If a dry cleaner and a drunken bum—okay, so he'd been the state's most sought-after P.I. in his previous life—could figure out who she was, so would others. The story wasn't going to stay out of the press this time. As the cliché had it, she could run, but she couldn't hide.

Neither could she stand by and see a man sentenced to death for two murders he didn't commit.

Climbing off the bus at her South Park stop late Friday morning, Tricia settled her purse and overnight bag on her shoulder, her son on her hip, and started the short walk to Scott's house. She had twenty-four hours before he got home. She hadn't meant to ever come back here. But that was when she'd thought she was living a life on the run.

As things now stood, she could take the time to pack. To plan.

Take the time to talk to Scott. If she could find the courage. She was done with running. From life. From fear. From herself. Leah had told her so many times that if she listened to her heart and made the choices it told her to make, life would do the rest….

She didn't know about that, but she'd been listening to her head and her fears for a long time now. It wasn't
working very well. She was sick of avoiding her image in the mirror—avoiding the truth about who and what she was. She was sick of the lies.

Jabbering away, Taylor stuck a wet finger in her ear. Tricia left it there.

And what about him? What about the baby she'd do anything to protect? How could she be sure this latest choice wasn't going to be the worst yet? What if she went back and somehow Thomas got to them?

Fear shot through her stomach and up to her chest. Her step faltered. But only for a moment. Going back was the right thing to do. She believed that.

Thomas was being tried for her death, with the death penalty attached, and she wasn't dead. Yes, she was convinced he'd killed Leah, and she could do her part to see that he was punished for that, but he hadn't killed
her.

Besides, she'd rather go back on her own terms than wait until she was discovered and exposed.

With a firm gait she turned onto Ivy, rounded the corner of Scott's drive, concentrating on the vivid reds and yellow and purples of the spring flowers covering his front yard. The miracle of new beginnings.

She had to believe there was a new beginning for her, too.

And then, as she made her way up the incline of the drive, she saw Scott's truck in the back of the carport. Saw her lover, dressed in tight jeans, a black T-shirt and sandals, his hair still wet from the shower, standing at the door watching her.

“Hi, Kate. Welcome home.”

 

“You had me followed.” She hadn't had the time she needed to rehearse, think, prepare, but knew defensiveness wasn't the approach she would have chosen.

Sitting out back in one of the two white plastic lawn chairs, upholstered pads making them relatively comfortable, Scott crossed an ankle over his knee, glanced at her and then away.

He'd been patient. She had to give him that. Patient and so much more. Other than the acerbic greeting he'd delivered when she arrived home an hour before, he'd been kind, playing with Taylor, waiting to talk to her until the baby went down for his morning nap.

But then, Scott
was
kind. His kindness was one of the first things that had attracted her in that bar those long months ago. One of the many things she loved about him.

“I was worried about you,” he finally said, an elbow resting on the arm of his chair, his hand hovering near his chin. For all his relaxed posture, there was nothing calm about him. “I was afraid you might be in trouble.”

She'd figured that out sometime in the middle of the night, lying awake in the dark at Patsy's home. Scott would have no other motive than to protect her. His life was about protecting people, saving them from harm.

“It scared me.”

“I had no idea that you knew.”

He didn't apologize for his duplicity. But if apologies for duplicity were the issue…

“I'm sorry,” she said.

He peered over at her. The painful emotion shimmering in his green eyes broke a heart that was already completely shattered. Or so she thought…

“I don't even know where to begin….”

He hadn't asked any questions. Might not even want to know the answers anymore. She owed them to him, anyway.

“You're married.” His voice wasn't accusatory. Wasn't angry. And yet it cut her more deeply than any of the horrible insinuations Thomas had made during the last six months of their life together. In part, perhaps, because Scott spoke the truth.

“Yes.”

“To a state senator.”

“Yes.”

Dog, who'd been so overjoyed to see them when they got home that he'd tripped over his feet and done a full flip in the air, was lying in the middle of the small grassy backyard, chewing on a rawhide stick.

“I met him at one of Leah's charity functions, for an orphan relief effort in Afghanistan. He was being auctioned off.”

“And you bought him.”

“No.” She'd been too dignified back then to do anything so overtly outgoing. “Leah did. And she gave him to me for my birthday.”

It had been love at first sight. Or at least, the closest thing to it she'd ever known. But then, what
had
she known?

“Like you—and as you've already guessed—I grew up with money,” she said, staring out at the wall several yards away. If it was painted something besides that boring gray, it wouldn't feel so…constrictive.

“Unlike your childhood, mine wasn't all that great.” There was a long jagged crack in the wall, running almost from top to bottom. Even cement had its weaknesses.

“My father owned more car dealerships than God. He was everything derogatory you've ever heard about car salespeople. He could charm the peanuts away from an elephant—coaxed my finishing-school mother away from her old-money family—but in the long run, most of what he said had to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. There'd usually be just enough truth for him to sail by, but if you lived with him, you could never count on any of it.”

Scott said nothing. But he was still sitting there, so she kept talking.

“And when my mother or I said or did something that didn't please him, he'd think nothing of whacking us across the face.”

“You were an only child?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, his expression pained, but she couldn't tell if his pain was for her and the sordid story she was
telling, or for himself. Or for them. Wasn't sure it mattered. She'd hurt him. That was enough.

“They divorced when I was twelve, but by then the damage had been done as far as my mother was concerned. She'd lost all self-respect. There were another six years of various men coming in and out of her life, using her, taking from her, hurting her.”

“Then what happened?”

“I left for college.”

“And your mother?”

Her stomach heaved with tension. “As of about two years ago…she was living in the mansion she inherited from her parents after their deaths, volunteering all over the city. She was on the board at the country club, too. About eight years before that, after Leah and I graduated from college and Leah became the charity organizer of the world, she drafted my mother's help and pretty much changed her life. Mom felt useful again, you know? It gave her back her self-respect.”

“Sounds like she was finally happy.”

“Until her only daughter turned up missing without a trace, you mean?” Tricia asked. There was so much guilt. She was responsible for so much pain. Yet what other choice had there been? To stay and be killed as Leah had? Have her unborn baby murdered as Leah's had been?

But if no other good came of going back, it would be wonderful to see her mother again.

Dog trotted over and Scott bent to scratch him be
hind the ears before scooping up the puppy and settling him on his lap.

“It's a classic story,” she said, watching the puppy, wishing for that second that she could be as joyful, as carefree, as unfettered by life's choices. “Abused girl grows up to marry abusive man.”

“Whitehead hit you.”

Had he read about it in the papers, too? She hadn't been following the San Diego versions too closely.

“Yep.”

He nodded, his gaze on the puppy he was fondling. “From the beginning?”

“We'd been married less than a month the first time.”

“Jesus!” Scott looked over at her, his eyes hard yet brimming with compassion. “You're a strong capable woman, Trish—Kate, whatever your name is…” He glanced away and said, half under his breath, “You've been sleeping in my bed for almost two years, I love your son as my own, and I don't even know what to call you.”

“Might as well call me Kate,” she said softly. “It's my name.”

He nodded. Stroked the puppy.

“Why'd you stay with him for so many years?” he asked after a time. She'd assumed they were finished with the conversation, figuring he could put the rest together for himself.

The sky was so blue, and the sun warm. Tricia slid down in her chair, closing her eyes, and turned her face
up to the heat. “Thomas is a charmer. He can be tender and generous and funny. That was the man I married, the man I thought I loved. The other behavior was caused by stress, making him act out of character. It took me years to realize that the tenderness was the part that wasn't real.”

She swallowed to rid herself of the dryness in her throat. It didn't work. But the sun on her face was warm. Nice.

“I threatened him after that first time. I said if he ever hit me again, I was leaving him and telling the world what he'd done. He was still under his daddy's thumb at that point and afraid of the fallout.”

She and Leah used to lie out in the sun for hours, talking—until they were twelve and lectured about wrinkles and leathery skin.

They had much more effective sunblocks now.

She should start sunbathing again.

“As he got involved in politics and became more powerful, the violence slowly started up again. But not often. And he was always so…so apologetic. So sincere.” She kept the bitterness out of her voice—and her heart—as best she could. She'd relived that time over and over in the past twenty-two months and she knew one thing for certain. She was never going to understand.

Not herself. Not Thomas. Not a love that would allow abusive behavior of any kind.